Various physical effects have been considered for providing non-volatile information storage devices. One such effect that has been considered in the art is conductive ferroelectric domain walls in otherwise insulating ferroelectric materials. Altering a configuration of the ferroelectric domain walls can alter the electrical resistance of a device. Since the ferroelectric domain wall configuration is non-volatile, the resulting device has an adjustable and non-volatile resistance, making it useful for various applications such as information storage. US 2011/0308580 is a representative example of this work.
However, manipulation of ferroelectric domains is generally undesirable because it necessarily involves motion of the atoms in the ferroelectric material. Ferroelectric domains are defined by a deformation of the crystal unit cells that leads to a net electrical polarization of the domain. Thus altering the domain configuration in a ferroelectric material involves changing this deformation of the unit cells. This means that ferroelectric switching is usually slow because the atoms have to move. Ferroelectric switching may also lead to unreliable devices, because this amounts to ‘moving parts’ within the material, which can lead to failure via mechanical fatigue etc.
Accordingly, it would be an advance in the art to provide control of electrical conductivity via conductive domain walls by altering domain configurations in a manner that does not involve movement of atoms.